I've hung my overcoat at the crossroads of media technology and social change for the last 20 years as a journalist, author, and consultant. That includes a book - CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World (Wiley) which chronicles the rise of online social activism - and bylines at The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, techPresident.com, Social Edge, Industry Standard, Inside, Worth and Contribute magazines, among many other publications. I co-founded three companies, including the pioneering '90s protoblog @NY and CauseWired, my consulting firm currently advising clients on the social commons. In my spare time, I'm an adjunct instructor of social media and philanthropy at New York University.

Google's Strange Attack On Bloggers And The Public Internet: The Massive Reaction To Reader Shutdown

Does Google understand the concept of corporate social responsibility? That seems to be the basic question around the company’s strange decision to shut down a tiny service that serves as a major audience conduit for many thousands of bloggers, citizen journalists, and self publishers.

Google’s announcement today that it is destroying Google Reader, the most popular RSS syndication tool was a massive blow to the blogging community – and to most of those speaking out tonight via social media, an entirely unnecessary attack on an important corner of the public Internet by a company with more than $50 billion in revenue and a newly-won reputation as a tech giant on the move.

While some may argue that RSS feeds (for Real Simple Syndication) have fallen from common usage in the social media era, how would Google explain the huge, instantaneous response on Twitter from Google Reader users? “Google Reader” trended almost immediately and instantly replace Google Glass as the most talked about Google product on Twitter. Here’s one of the calmer, more considered tweets:

Google is murdering Google Reader. It is committing appicide. Hate crime. NO GR, NO PEACE

Even hard-core Google fans (and this writer is an Android user who runs his consulting practice on Google’s platform for files, email, and calendar) were aghast at the lack of self awareness the company seemed to exhibit in its curt notice that it’s axing Google Reader in July. Here’s a typical reaction:

You know how bad the Google Reader outrage is? Even the Google apologists on G+ are pissed. I’ve only seen a handful of Google defenders

Oddly, the company didn’t seem aware of the firestorm its announcement would create. On the official Google Reader Blog, engineer Alan Green wrote: “We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.”

Outrage is more like it. Green wrote that usage had “declined” but any entrepreneur with the kind of loyalty demonstrated in the wake of Reader’s announced shutdown would instantly be financed by a horde of venture capitalists. In short, Google Reader is used and loved by a very loud – and as some would no doubt say, very influential – core user group. Any app builder would kill for this following – any social entrepreneur would walk a thousand miles for this crowd.

And make no mistake, Google Reader is something of an important public accommodation, a real point of differentiation for a company whose motto is “don’t be evil.” Google was doing a public service for the news and blogger community by keeping Reader going. Understandably, the Reader shutdown was received not just as the end of an era but almost as an attack on those who count on it for traffic and attention. Over at Techcrunch, Sarah Perez had this reaction: “Don’t be evil? If that’s the unofficial Google motto, then the company has failed to deliver today. Among the products Google just announced it plans to sunset (read: kill off), beloved feed-reading service Google Reader is now on the chopping block.”

Longtime bloggers like Lance Mannion (a friend and colleague) were melancholy. “I’m not sure but I think it’s going to cost me about 200 readers,” Lance tweeted at me. Bloggers like Mannion don’t enjoy hordes of readers because they’re independents. They prefer a loyal core readership and the communities they’ve built, and managed to keep despite the challenge of Facebook and Twitter.

Google’s strangely tone deaf move could mean huge upside for others, however – if RSS survives the hit. Here’s what Josh Levy (and many others) wrote about that opportunity.

The loss of Google Reader is a big opportunity – and reminder – to step away from Google and support more indie developers like @feedly

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Why is it stupid? The stupidest moves by Google execs were these: 1) not making Blogger social by creating a view page so anyone could have a stream of posts from blogs, 2) creating G+ rather than #1 above, 3) creating Orkut and then not killing it in favor of #1

If execs would have slapped on one feature to Blogger, they would have created the largest, most robust social medium in existence.

Users could have taken advantage of the countless widgets and customization features of Blogger, including privacy, private blogs, and blogging by email. As well, Google could have leveraged their already-built vast advertising platform over hundreds of millions of blogs built by a vast installed user base many times the size of Google+.

This should hardly come as a surprise. The entire paradigm of ‘free’ social and professional networking is merely a ruse. Doomsayers vs Naysayers. I believe that eventually it will become clear that Big Brother is behind all of it, and the stakeholders in Facebook & Google are intermediary profiteers.

I do not understand Google’s thinking here. I find it extremely useful and I use it multiple times a day on various platforms (desktop, iPhone, iPad, my Macbook) and no matter where I am all my feeds well over a hundred are synchronized.

Time to rethink relying on Google. I will be more hesitant to use Google drive and other Google services. Heck – make it a paid service. I would gladly pay a small monthly fee for a service like that. Google is going to alienate the hardcore Web users.